H. Yoo
Research expert covering South Korea
Tire market in the United States - facts & statistics
Virtually all wheeled land vehicles in operation, whether off-road or on-road, use tires. This dependence makes the tire industry an important component of the U.S. automobile industry. With nearly 10.56 million passenger and commercial vehicles being produced and almost 15.9 million vehicles being sold in the United States in 2024, the U.S. market calls for a large number of tire manufacturers. The market for replacement tires in the United States was sized at some 58 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.
To fully meet the demand for tires in the U.S., the country relies on imports, especially from Asian countries. In 2024, the U.S. imported around 42 million units of passenger car tires from Thailand and about 22.9 million units from Mexico.
Tire market segments
The most used tires around the world today can be categorized under the pneumatic segment: they operate with air or gas under pressure. Their primary purposes are to provide traction between the vehicle and the road as well as shock absorption for impact.
Tires can be further categorized based on the type of vehicle they’re used for and whether they’re used on new vehicles coming from the factory - known as original equipment (OE) - or serving as a replacement for such tires.
Replacement passenger car tires are the leading segment with shipments of 221,600 units in 2024. In the same year, some 41.4 million units of OE passenger car tires were shipped in the U.S., a decrease of nearly 11.2 percent compared with 2023.Â
Leading companies
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. is among the key tire makers headquartered in the U.S. Goodyear reported a revenue of more than 18.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2024 and ranked third in the list of largest tire producers in the world. The French multinational corporation Michelin was the global leader in tire manufacturing in 2024 with a revenue of around 31.9 billion U.S. dollars. Bridgestone, a Japan-based manufacturer, ranked second with a revenue of over 28.5 billion U.S. dollars in the same year.
